


1 N3V3R PR4Y3D MYS3LF, 3XC3PT TO THOS3 TH4T PR4Y3D FOR M3

by crescendi



Series: recrudescestuck [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Game Over Timeline, Gen, God Tier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-08-28 00:00:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16712557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescendi/pseuds/crescendi
Summary: title from this too shall pass by danny schmidtTerezi Pyrope is three sweeps old when she first kills.Terezi Pyrope is four sweeps old when she makes her first attempt to try Vriska Serket.Terezi Pyrope is five sweeps old and Aradia Megido dies.Terezi Pyrope is six sweeps old when the world ends.Terezi Pyrope is seven sweeps old and she is horribly alone.Terezi Pyrope is eight sweeps old when everything goes wrong.





	1 N3V3R PR4Y3D MYS3LF, 3XC3PT TO THOS3 TH4T PR4Y3D FOR M3

**Author's Note:**

> the ending might make much sense without knowledge of recrudescestuck uh

Terezi Pyrope is three sweeps old when she first kills. She cuts him down in a forest of bubblegum pink and metallic blue, marvels at warm yellow blood on her hands. It is messy and she wonders at the power of a few well-placed strokes.

It took her for what felt like an eternity of deliberation on her part, picking him out and taking into account of why he might have burnt down Naroow’s hive, his known friends and how he might have known Naroow’s. Later, she will not put so much effort into her victims.

But she is always careful. Always always always. Never takes more than she must. Never lets the criminals she finds guilty suffer. Justice is not sadistic. Justice is swift and exact. It does not torture. It does find its verdict quickly and attributes an equivalent punishment.

This is what her lusus tells her, anyway.

She dreams of her ancestor that night, dressed in candy red and brandishing a sharpened dragon-headed blade. She drives it into the heart of a yellowblood. It is the same troll Terezi killed that night. He screams a death-scream and blood pours out of his eyes and ears and mouth and nose and 

She wakes up in a cold sweat and trolls Equius (who is frankly kind of gross but he’s usually up late and his grossness distracts her so who cares) until her heartbeat is steady and her hands stop shaking. She still doesn’t go back to the sopor.   


* * *

Terezi Pyrope is four sweeps old when she makes her first attempt to try Vriska Serket.

She goes to Vriska’s territory (a stupid move in retrospect), swordkind brandished and legislacerator uniform freshly pressed. She moves under a red sky and navigates steep cliffs. And just when she starts getting excited, the ground gives out under her and she lands with a  _ huff _ on her ass.

She’s fallen into a trap. And not even a  _ clever _ trap. It is a just a pit drilled into the ground and covered with a tarp.

She’d say bad luck in on her part but luck doesn’t exist. And it seemed like a lot of effort on Vriska’s part for catching one troll at a time.  This is a very good analysis of Vriska’s character, retrospectively.

This is fixable. She decaptchalogs a rope and ties to her swordstick. It takes a few tries, but eventually she manages to throw it so the point sticks into the ground. She hoists herself up, nails digging into the fiber, palms burning, muscles aching. It feels like forever, but she drags herself out of the pit and raises herself up to her feet to find herself staring at Vriska Serket.

She pulls her sword out of ground and points it at Vriska’s throat. She announces Vriska is guilty of excessive first degree murder and robbery. She has five minutes to make her case.

Vriska laughs. It is sounds fake and practiced because it is both of these things.

She knocks Terezi’s sword aside, grabs her by the lapels, and her skull connects with the air where Terezi’s nose was a moment ago.

Terezi bodyslams Vriska. It is not the most elegant of moves, but they’re about the same size and it works to put her on the ground. Terezi puts her foot on Vriska’s chest, rests the point of her sword at the hollow of Vriska’s throat. She announces Vriska has been found in contempt of court. Her execution will commence and her last words will be given to her quadrantmates, if she so chooses.

Vriska only says “my only quadrantmate is your lusus” and Terezi realizes a set of 8d8 are lying scattered on the ground next to them. This happens a split second before a flash of light and a cobalt cutlass appears in Vriska’s hand and it leaps, almost of its own volition, toward she chest. The dice have disappeared.

Terezi jumps out of the way, barely avoiding the strike. The cutlass follows. Vriska appears to only have one target—her chest.

It takes a while of being exclusively on the defense for her to realize Vriska has no style, no strategy. It’s the cutlass doing all the work for her. She has a death grip on it, and the dots connect in Terezi’s mind.

As she deflects another stab, Terezi brings her blade around and slices into Vriska’s side. 

She howls in pain, doubling over and releasing the cutlass. It turns white-hot before breaking up into the dice.

But when she folds, they’re close enough one of Vriska’s horns digs into Terezi’s sword arm, and, more out of surprise than pain, she releases her blade. It clatters to the ground and both trolls back away, now disarmed, eyeing each other warily. 

“Truce?” Terezi is the first one to say.

“Truce,” Vriska agrees.

It is the start of a fate-changing partnership.

* * *

Terezi Pyrope is five sweeps old and Aradia Megido dies. Terezi knows who did it with sickening, sickening certainty.

She does not give Vriska a chance to make her case this time. That is what she tells herself, but her traitorous fingers turn on her and she gives Vriska’s the opportunity to defend what she did. She does not take it.

So Terezi grits her teeth, tells the one who speaks in white what Vriska has — her little  _ advantage _ .

It takes her eye and arm and Terezi turns the sopor up to the highest dilation and stares up at the ceiling, numb because she just ruined her closest friendship. It is the price of justice and Redglare would have done the same (or that is what she tells herself), but it does not help the hurt deep in her chest.

Terezi wakes up staring at the sun.

It is the worst pain she has ever felt. She will bear the scars for the rest of her life. If not for her lusus’s whispers, she would have died out there, in the forest she knows like the back of her hand, stumbling, alone, helpless, blinded.

Terezi collapses on the floor of her treehouse, whimpering. She doesn’t know how she manages to fall asleep, with the pain and the lack of sopor, but her dreams are terrible, filled with images of a mutilated Vriska and Aradia’s bleeding body and drones tearing apart Tavros and Sollux with strings dictating his every moment and herself with blood dripping from her eyes.

Terezi wakes up screaming and crying and curls into a ball, and she feels so fucking pathetic and she might have never moved again if not for her lusus, who murmurs and whispers comfort. She turns blindness into a strength, to something that could be a pride.

Terezi doesn’t talk to Vriska for three seasons. When she does, it is only to make the deal that the revenge cycle will stop and Vriska will no longer use her powers to hurt others.

There is something raw and ugly and hurt between Terezi and Vriska.

Terezi mistakes this for caliginous feelings. She is wrong. 

* * *

Terezi Pyrope is six sweeps old when the world ends. This has many meanings. You can choose whatever one you want.

But it’s Nepeta’s body that makes Terezi break a little.

Her throat constricts and her knees wobble. She has the urge to clean up the body a little, but she ignores it. What would be the point? It’s not Nepeta anymore, only the shell that used to house her.

Terezi’s just thankful Dave cannot see her, cannot not see the chlorine blue tears well up in the corners of her eyes.

She has a job to do. She dons her teal-and-red legislacerator’s wear, just like she did when she and Vriska first met.

_ This is justice, _ or so this is what Terezi tells herself. All she is an instrument of justice. Even if all the legislacerators in the galaxy are dead and Redglare is long-rotted, she is here to deal out justice.

She isn’t a child about to kill her oldest surviving friend. She is the scion of the Pyrope line. She is the Seer of Mind.

She gives Vriska a chance; she always seems to. It doesn’t change there are two options. Vriska goes and everyone dies. Vriska stays and Vriska dies.

She turns away. Terezi feels that raw ugly ache deep in her chest. She wonders if Vriska feels it too.

Terezi’s form is perfect. Terezi’s execution is flawless. Terezi’s performance would have made  archeradicators weep.  She drives her blade between her wings. Holds it there for three beats. Wrenches it back. Her blades drips blueberry.

Vriska falls forward, lands face down. It feels like an eternity, Terezi waits, standing over Vriska’s corpse.

Her body glows twilight purple.  **_ JUST. _ ** It does not ease the guilt.

Terezi is not Neophyte Redglare. She cannot execute the guilty without a second thought.

Vriska is —was not Marquise Mindfang. She is — she was a victim of her horrible circumstance.

Karkat finds her. He sees Terezi. He sees Vriska. He knows.

Terezi buries her face into his shoulder and lets sobs shake her. Karkat puts his arms around her. He doesn’t say anything.

This will be one of the last hugs Terezi gets.

 

* * *

Terezi Pyrope is seven sweeps old and she is horribly alone.

A matespritship with Dave works in theory, but once they are face to face, it felt wrong. So she doesn’t really talk to him anymore.

Then Karkat falls into diamonds with Gamzee and he also has this thing with Dave and it’s red as his eyes, as his blood, even if neither will admit it, she can See it coming. Ashen wouldn’t work, because who would she mediate between? And she doesn’t feel that ugly thing she felt with Vriska with Karkat, so Terezi cuts off him too. (She doesn’t mean to. It just sort of happens.) Rose and Kanaya are infatuated with each other, and Terezi would feel like she was intruding, a wrench in the machine.

That leaves Gamzee.

She feels that horrible hurt with him, so she takes him as a kismesis. He coils his claws into her, sinks his teeth into her Mind.

She rarely leaves her room now, just lies there, staring blindly up into the ceiling and trying not to cry when she hears the clattering in the vents.

She tries to think about Nepeta, about what she would do. Nepeta wouldn’t let Gamzee get to her. Nepeta wouldn’t cut off all of her friends. Nepeta is dead.

Terezi rolls over and tries to sleep, tries to forget Nepeta’s broken body.

When the Beforus trolls visit her dreams, Terezi expects to find someone — just someone she can  _ talk  _ to.

And yet Kurloz always seems to be hanging around, and he smells too strongly of Gamzee for her to even admit she feels anything.

Latula is everything Terezi is not — confident and bold and brash. It’s not fair, but nothing ever is.

Aranea is...better. She knows how to shape the dreambubbles so it is only them, no purpleblood to be found.

Aranea listens to Terezi with kindly nods and understanding words, and Terezi can smell her eyes — crisp and snow-blank — without remembering Vriska.

Aranea offers to heal her eyes.

Without thinking, Terezi accepts.

It is the choice that damns  _ her _ , she will later think.

Karkat and Dave try to help. They really do. And she really does try to tell them what’s going on, but when she says it, it comes out sounding trivial and small-sounding.

Maybe Nepeta could have made it sound right. She was always so good with words, after all. (Oh, and she’s also mourning a girl who died over a sweep ago. Add that to the list of her problems.)

* * *

  
Terezi Pyrope is eight sweeps old when everything goes wrong.

She doesn’t matter much, really. But she thinks about Nepeta, she thinks about Vriska and, while Rose is talking to Kanaya, Terezi makes herself a blindfold the color of what her eyes once were, and ties it around her eyes.

She reminds herself of justice. She reminds herself of the righteous girl who murdered a yellowblood because she believed they had done something unjust. Anger roars through her mind and she goes to kick the hell out of Makara. She screams meaningless judicial metaphors and phrases as she does until her blade is soaked with grape. She can feel tears roll down her face freely. She remembers all the time Gamzee mocked her for crying. She screams wordlessly and digs her sword in deeper.

And then  **GAME OVER** . She can smell it in the Medium.

She starts to laugh, loud and grating and insane. Fuck, it hurts to laugh. It hurts to breathe.

No. Not  **GAME OVER** . Not as long as Terezi motherfucking Pyrope is alive. (Which may not be long.)

She is going to F1X TH1S.

Nepeta didn’t care about any rules. Vriska did but she broke them anyway. Terezi has cared about the rules and who followed them all of her life. They’re both dead, and look where it got her.

She is going to shatter everything, every single law Skaia has thought to lay down.

John and Roxy stare at her, presumably terrified.

Terezi tastes the teal light that starts to surround her. She starts to float, to rise, to Ascend, still bleeding. She feels tendrils of power start to peel off of her, every choice anyone has ever made in the history of these broken, disjointed sessions forcing themselves into her skull. She sinks her hands into them, starts ripping and detaching them, refixing and stitching them back together, breaking the timeline to the point where Skaia  _ has  _ to notice her.

It starts off faint, but eventually it turns burning. It’s glorious.

The light sears off every square inch of her clothing, leaving her naked and glowing and powerful and staring directly into the crucible. It blinds her all over again and she laughs.

She can smell Time. She can feel the roaring flow of it around her as SBURB tries to fix what she’s breaking. Two teal wings sprout from her back. The fabric of a Seer’s hood falls over her eyes and oh does she  _ S33. _

She only has a few moments to revel in her god tiering when SBURB intervenes. Or maybe some other force. She can’t tell.

Scratch.

Reset.

Repeat.

The last thing that happens the Medium, still proclaiming  **GAME OVER** is the supernova of Terezi Pyrope.

**Author's Note:**

> so i pray to hands and i pray to needs  
> and i pray to blades of grass to find forgiveness in the weeds  
> but as for health i just never did believe  
> so i never prayed myself except to those that prayed for me  
> \- this too shall pass, danny schmidt


End file.
